01 First things first

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a strategic approach to developing, managing, and improving products from conception to disposal—a way of dealing with the different stages across a product lifecycle. However, it can also be a piece of software (or system) that helps manufacturing organizations and Engineering-to-Order (ETO) companies efficiently work through these different stages.

By blending existing procedures and processes with individual expertise and innovative technology, PLM software like Siemens Teamcenter provides a framework that enhances product quality, reduces costs, and accelerates time to market. Product Lifecycle Management software offers a single platform for all product data and related processes. This single source of truth makes it easier for stakeholders to find the most up-to-date information, allowing them to make the right decisions more quickly and efficiently.

02 The stages of PLM

What, when, and why?

From a manufacturing and ETO perspective, Product Lifecycle Management can be divided into five main stages: Conception, Design and Engineering, Manufacturing, Commissioning, and Decommissioning.

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03 The benefits of PLM

How can PLM help?

The benefits of Product Lifecycle Management for manufacturing aren’t just linked to transparency and timekeeping. Clear protocols facilitated by comprehensive PLM software like Siemens Teamcenter increase the likelihood of creating better-quality products, fewer errors, and greater cost savings thanks to more efficient production processes.

In short, PLM software is crucial for both custom ETO requests and mass-produced products.

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04 The key components of PLM software

Optimizing the PLM value chain

PLM software streamlines the way different manufacturing companies and specific stakeholders can access data. This is done by integrating tools and features to optimize the overall management of a product. Some tools, such as CAD software, are used heavily at specific stages, whereas key components like document management make up the backbone of a PLM system’s overall offering.

Siemens Teamcenter offers a multitude of tools and components that make PLM a no-brainer for manufacturers looking to scale and optimize their business processes without losing track of the original vision for the brand and products.

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05 Picking a PLM implementation partner

Ask yourself the right questions

Picking a PLM partner is the first step to increased efficiency, smoother processes, and better data management. However, to ensure your business's needs are met now and in the future, it's worth considering a few things.

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06 Digital transformation with CLEVR

Product Lifecycle Management in action

Siemens Teamcenter is a comprehensive PLM software suite offering extensive capabilities for managing product data and processes across the entire product lifecycle.

We chose to partner with Siemens because of Teamcenter’s collection of tools and integrations, as well as its overall usability.

Nel Hydrogen recently partnered with CLEVR to significantly enhance its product development capabilities. By leveraging Siemens Teamcenter, CLEVR is implementing a comprehensive PLM solution that streamlines data management and helps automate engineering processes. The collaboration is ongoing, with a view to expanding the scope of this initial project.

Our expertise in digital transformation and PLM is what sets us apart from other solution partners. We combine extensive industry knowledge with digitalization expertise to implement tailor-made Siemens Teamcenter solutions that automate and streamline product lifecycle processes.

Even as your company scales and adapts to new challenges, your processes remain flexible and robust. Let CLEVR guide you through today’s bold decisions for greater peace of mind.

Conception

During the ideation phase, competitive analyses help identify market gaps and customers’ unserved needs. This information is used to conceptualize the product, creating a solid foundation for the subsequent PLM stages and decision-making processes.

Automotive manufacturers may, for instance, conduct a competitive analysis to identify gaps in the market for electric trucks, conceptualizing a new model that meets specific urban delivery service needs.

Manufacturing

From a mass manufacturing perspective, this stage starts with a validated, market-ready product resulting from iterative feedback rounds during development. Once the production process is established, it’s time to scale. Planning, executing, and monitoring the scaled production process involves supply chain management and quality control.

ETO companies usually have a single manufacturing process and only one chance to get an order right. Therefore, this stage depends heavily on accurate information from the Design and Engineering, facilitated by efficient PLM software that gets the right information to the right people at the right time.

Commissioning

For mass manufacturers, this stage consists mainly of introducing the product to the market, distribution, sales, and support. Successful product launches require these aspects to be aligned from the start.

In an ETO context, commissioning involves customizing a product's delivery, installation, and support. Successfully deploying bespoke products requires careful logistics coordination, detailed installation procedures, and tailored customer support.

Managing product effectivity—acquiring spare parts and documentation for a specific product version—is also crucial here.

PLM software helps manage these complex processes by providing precise, up-to-date information to all stakeholders. For example, in an ETO machinery project, PLM ensures that engineering details, installation guides, and support documentation are all aligned, allowing for a smooth transition from production to customer site setup and ongoing support.

Decommissioning

Product decommissioning involves Product Managers, Environmental Compliance personnel, and logistics teams. Retirement isn’t just stopping production—effective communication with customers and suppliers is crucial. A tech company may need to plan for disposing of, recycling, or remanufacturing obsolete laptops, ensuring the remaining stock is sold off or used for spare parts. Letting the right people know exactly how these processes should be expected to work is almost as important as the procedures themselves.

For ETO companies, decommissioning involves carefully planning the phase-out of custom products and ensuring clients are supported throughout the process.

Enhanced product quality

PLM software creates a single source of truth for all product data, giving (authorized) departments and stakeholders access to the latest information. This comprehensive data management reduces errors resulting from miscommunication or outdated information.

PLM software also supports extensive testing and validation processes, which helps manufacturers identify issues early in the development cycle.

Reduced time to market

PLM software streamlines a product’s development stage by automating workflows and improving communication among teams. Reducing the time spent on administration speeds up decision-making and helps avoid human errors often caused by repetitive, manual tasks.

Enhanced data management and collaboration also improve the efficiency of the earlier lifecycle stages, which leads to quicker market introductions.

Better data management and collaboration

A centralized PLM system ensures that all product data is easily accessible to those who need it, such as marketers creating assets or campaign messages and after-sales personnel creating training assets for customer support staff. This improves data accuracy and consistency, enabling more informed decision-making. PLM software allows and encourages departments to share information in real time, which reduces information silos and keeps everyone on the same page with the most up-to-date information. 

Cost savings across the product lifecycle

PLM software helps companies avoid inefficient practices that often clog up business processes. This helps reduce costs associated with product development, manufacturing, and maintenance. It also supports better resource management and reduces the need for costly reworks.  

An overview of the production process, including governance and control of automated machinery, lets companies spot material waste and identify ways to optimize production schedules. This reduces manufacturing costs linked to energy consumption and raw materials, which minimizes the environmental impact of a company’s operations. Siemens Teamcenter offers a Carbon Footprint Calculator to help companies assess their decisions as they look to strike a balance between environmental impact, cost reduction, and meeting customer demands. 

Integration and connectivity

Siemens Teamcenter offers extensive integration capabilities with real-time data access for better collaboration. This ensures that all departments and stakeholders across the product lifecycle are on the same page. This is crucial for ETO manufacturers and larger organizations aiming to streamline operations, maintain product quality, and scale effectively.

Good PLM software should seamlessly integrate with various enterprise systems and authoring tools, ensuring cohesive product data management throughout its lifecycle. This means creating a seamless flow of information by connecting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools, and document management software.

Computer-aided design (CAD)

CAD software is essential for creating precise 2D and 3D models, allowing engineers and designers to visualize and iterate on product designs. In PLM, CAD integrates design data with other lifecycle processes, ensuring that all design changes are tracked and managed efficiently. As you’d imagine, CAD software is heavily involved in the conception stage of a product’s lifecycle. So is Product Data Management. 

Product Data Management (PDM)

PDM centralizes all product-related data—which often changes—ensuring accessibility, accuracy, and security. This invariably improves collaboration and decision-making. Within PLM, PDM manages the lifecycle of product data, including version control and access permissions, ensuring that the latest information is available to the right people. 

Bill of Materials (BOM)

A bill of materials (BOM) lists all materials, parts, and assembly configurations required to manufacture a product, which makes it a key feature of the development stage. A BOM represents the product structure in a hierarchical format that clearly presents the relationship between certain components and assemblies. Depending on the product and industry, a BOM can range from a simple, single-level structure to a multi-level structure with specific manufacturing, engineering, and customization guidance.

Like PDM systems, BOM systems track changes. This means that any requested changes to a BOM are documented and sent for approval. A BOM can also include tools to analyze the cost of materials and components. Having an exhaustive and holistic view of the costs will help manufacturers with budgeting forecasts, general cost management, and reporting.

Engineering change management

Engineering Change Management is the tracking, controlling, and approving of changes to product designs and processes. During the development stage, Engineering Change Management helps stakeholders assess the impact of proposed changes on existing designs and processes. It also records modifications, which is vital with the rapid development of a product often containing so many iterations—some of which may need to be revisited for another assessment. 

Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM)

CAM software automates manufacturing by converting CAD models into machine instructions, enhancing production precision and efficiency. In PLM software, CAM ensures that manufacturing data is consistent with design data, reducing errors and streamlining the transitions between the design, development, and production stages. 

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

SCM tools are used in the launch and production phase to manage the flow of goods, information, and finances related to a product. In PLM, SCM ensures that supply chain activities are aligned with product development and production schedules, which improves efficiency and reduces costs. 

Document management

This process comprises organizing and managing all documents related to a product’s entire lifecycle. This can include items ranging from compliance records to product brochures. Having the necessary documents in easy-to-find places is key when companies are posed with compliance questions from external regulators. This component is often a feature of the end-of-life phase when companies look to “close the loop” of an existing product, ensuring that it has been produced, distributed, and discontinued in a manner that complies with any number of (changing) regulations.

Compliance and regulatory management

Maintaining a database of the regulations and standards applicable to a product is critical for keeping stakeholders informed on the latest regulatory developments. Sudden changes can result in product non-compliance, which invariably leads to fines and can negatively impact publicity and trust. 

This key component provides the tools to track compliance throughout a product’s lifecycle, which helps generate reports needed for regulatory submissions. Audits can often be lengthy and nerve-wracking for companies. So, having an automated process in place to ensure products meet safety and quality standards can help avoid surprises when regulators are sifting through documentation. 

Do they provide an end-to-end solution?

Ensure the PLM partner you choose will handle the entire product lifecycle. Those that appear only at certain stages and offer support reactively may struggle to produce the most efficient results for your business.

Are they innovative?

It's good to consider how and if your potential PLM partner embraces new technology. Some tried-and-tested methods are all well and good, but partners that embrace the power of low-code with novel PLM systems like Siemens Teamcenter could provide the spark you need to bring your product processes to the next level.

Do they have the right expertise?

Verifying the expertise of those you're considering to partner with is crucial. How experienced are they when it comes to implementing PLM solutions? Do they have the right connections and partnerships with software providers?

Will they be the right fit for your industry?

Look for partners that offer insights into the PLM space and your specific industry.

Like any good PLM system, an implementation partner should be proactive and have an appreciation for moving digital transformation technology forward across all sectors.

Will they provide you with reliable support?

Ensure your PLM partner will offer support at every stage of the implementation process, focusing on the needs of your business with effective solutions that last.

What about the future?

A good PLM implementation partner shouldn't just ensure your solutions and processes work now. Be certain your partner will create a clear, bespoke PLM roadmap that looks years into the future. If they're focused on the here and now without considering the potential twists and turns within your business and industry, you could be in for some nasty surprises.

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Just-in-time performance management | CLEVR

Published on Jun 16, 2025
min read
Blog

‘Premature optimization is the root of all evil’. This is what Donald Knuth, author of the famous book series The Art Of Computer Programming, wrote in 1974. That does not mean however that you should not optimize for performance at all or wait until the performance problems show up in production.

In this blog article I will suggest when and how to do performance optimization in the application life cycle of Mendix applications.

WHEN TO DO PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION?

Let us first treat the ‘when’. There is one simple answer. Always keep performance in mind, but try to design and build the simplest solution of your application first. If the simplest version performs well you are done. Otherwise your application might serve as a prototype for analyzing performance or serve as a test to compare it against a more complex optimized application.

Trivial performance optimizations like obvious indexes and optimal query-where-clauses should always be used. For example when you know an attribute is searched against and the amount of records in the database is large you create an index. And you always build smart query statements (xPath, OQL) that do not use ‘NOT’ in where clauses unless you really have to.

If you develop a new function for your application it is advised to use the performance tools when the functionality works for the first time. Do not wait until all the other stuff like UX, security, maintenance and such are done. It is best to look at performance in parallel with those activities and base your design decisions upon the measured performance facts.

Since we all develop in an agile way, you should test agile as well. So you build up your test scripts and you run them very frequently. If you have automated your test scripts you can run them daily as a regression test and give developer very fast feedback when something is broken. Also when you measure the response times in the script you build up a history and you can do trend analysis on functions even when still in development.

During the test and acceptance sprints you let tooling run along to measure usage by test users and response times of the application. During the test you fill your database with (if needed fake) data to match the (expected) production size or you use a production database dump in later iterations.

During production you measure usage statistics. You also add monitoring scripts for selected functionality to measure behavior in a consistent way. When you run into performance issues in production you need tooling to analyze it quickly. You review the issue and hope it does not lead to a complete redesign of your application. In future blog article I will go into more detail how to approach such issues.

HOW TO DO PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION?

Next, let us get into the ‘how’. To analyze performance you need to know what is happening in the application internally (under the hood). You need to be able to link business model items from the Mendix modeler to execution steps in the java runtime, so you know which steps consume a certain amount of time.

Off course performance issues are not limited to the Mendix application or database. It is important to look at the application infrastructure as a whole. This includes the browser, the network, the web server, the Mendix business server, the database and the supporting operating systems and java virtual machines.

The following picture gives a comprehensive overview of the ‘how’:

the application infrastructure as a whole

This overview assumes an issue is to be investigated, but you can read ‘new function’ where is says ‘issue’. You first measure the basic responses and see where you need to look further. I will introduce the tools I use in a moment.

After the first step you need to decide where to look further. There is always a part that takes the most time, but if that amount of time is acceptable you can (and often should) decide to stop analyzing and certainly not fall into the trap of pre-mature optimization.

The final steps are the optimizations steps. Once you know where to look for the issue that contributes to a degraded performance of your application, you can zoom into that component. The how to fix performance issues is a whole other topic of a future blog.

Let me now share with you some of the tools I use. The first tool is the developer tool of your browsers (built in or plugged in). These tools allow you to measure and debug just about everything on the client-side. The following screenshot shows the network tab of the Google Chrome Developer tools when logging into a Mendix application:

network tab of the Google Chrome Developer tools

As seen above the network timelines are an easy indication of where to look further. Waiting usually means the server is busy. Content download time can be changed by using compression on a web server or by reducing the amount of content (by selecting less rows or columns in a grid for example).

To look further into the time spent on a Mendix Business Server and see what is happening I use CLEVR’ Performance Tool from the APM Tools Suite. With this tool you can drill down into microflows, actions, loops and even see the SQL statements that Mendix generates. In the screenshots below you will see a sequence of steps:

  • We first show you the microflow as called when pressing a run report button in our application
  • Next we drill down into:
    • The loop action where you can select an iteration
    • The ‘loop-microflow’, which is the inside of a loop in the Mendix Modeler
  • Finally we drill down some levels deeper until we reach an action that generates a SQL statement

Screenshot of the microflow as called when pressing a run report button:

View Microflow Performance

Then we drill down to the loop-action:

View Loop Action Performance

Subsequently we drill down to the loop-microflow, i.e. the inside of the loop in the Modeler:

View Microflow Performance Called by Loop Action

We drill down further until you reach something you can optimize, for example a database retrieve statement:

View Action Performance Database retrieve statement

The performance tool of the APM suite of tools perfectly helps you to pinpoint where the issue is in your application code.

The performance tool is capable of running in production. If needed with all kinds of safety measures to ensure that you don’t claim too much of the server’s resources. This contributes to the just-in-time part of the title. Sometimes performance issues only appear in production and production is the only place where you can gather information. The performance tool is designed to help you with this.

Yet, another tool I use, is the Statistics tool in the APM Tools Suite. At CLEVR we let this tool run at every customer in production to collect usage information all the time. This tool can be used to get a first impression of which microflows take the most time. Also this tool can point at frequent running microflows that all together consume a lot of time and where a small improvement can thus have a large effect.

The data collected by the statistics tool is also used to make trend analysis reports and see if microflows are slowing down over time because the dataset is growing, or if microflows are slowing down suddenly, maybe due to a new deployment.

The bottom line is that you need good tools to do your job. I’ve created some tools for myself to help me to do my job and CLEVR has bundled them in the APM Tools suite to benefit you. If you want to know read more about the APM Tools suite please go to this page.

June 16, 2025 4:28 PM
/Blog

The most common Mendix helpdesk problems and how to solve them | CLEVR

Published on Jun 16, 2025
min read
Blog

When a customer calls the helpdesk they want help and they want it fast, right? But do they know what happened that caused their problem? And is the right information logged? Or does your Mendix application need a Flight data recorder?

The helpdesk needs to understand a problem to the level that either the solution can be given to the customer or the helpdesk can proceed looking into the problem without the customer on the phone. To get to that point the helpdesk wants to collect information (what steps did the customer take, log files), to reproduce the problem and to have access to an environment where they can play around and eventually to test the solution.

When looking at the CLEVR helpdesk for Mendix Apps I noticed two patterns. The first pattern I call: ‘show me the money’ and handles the ‘can you turn on the detailed logging’ question. The second pattern I call: ‘thinking inside the box’ and is about the ‘can you send me a database dump’ or ‘can I get access to the system’ questions the helpdesk often has to ask.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

When a customer approaches the helpdesk the first step of the helpdesk agent is focused on discovering the actual problem. Furthermore, the helpdesk agent need to know what actions the end user performed so the helpdesk can reproduce the problem. The first trouble-shooting question is always about explaining the problem to enable reproduction of the problem with a focus to actually catch the problem.

If the problem can be reproduced the helpdesk can start working on fixing it.

However, reproducing the problem is often very time consuming, or the problem cannot be reproduced at all. In addition to reproduce the problem, the next usual response to a customer problem is to look at the log files. These log files sometimes provide more technical error messages but often they do not tell you what happened, only what broke.

So the helpdesk, in the friendliest way, asks the customer to turn on more detailed logging, lets the customer wait for the problem to happen again, and then lets the customer feed the helpdesk with more information before they can fix the problem and provide a permanent solution.

This process should be more effective and less time consuming. Would it not be nice to have something similar to a Flight data recorder on an airplane that records all vital information just before the crash?

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX

A helpdesk person needs to be very good at predicting what the customer saw or which actions the customer performed. Over the phone (or mail or chat or twitter or whatever communication channel is used) the helpdesk cannot see the customer’s desk or the inside of the servers. If the software and the computers are not complex enough on their own, the helpdesk also lacks the proximity and permissions to see and touch the stuff themselves. See it as a kind of a black box around a black box. The helpdesk person needs to think inside the box he or she can’t see.

The first attempt is often to imagine what happened and then to try and see if this will happen on a local (lab) system at the helpdesk as well. If this works the helpdesk can start fixing and does not need further help from the customer for this. More often however extra information from the customer is needed.

When the helpdesk can’t imagine what happened a series of actions often happen:

  • The helpdesk asks the customer for extra logging and often the customer has to ask their IT guys to deliver this
  • The helpdesk asks the customer to try things and describe what happens
  • The helpdesks asks for a database dump to build a situation in the lab that resembles the customer situation as much as possible
  • The helpdesks visits the customer to see for themselves or asks the customer for remote access

This involves a lot of activities where the helpdesk asks the customer to deliver information. And often the customer has to ask additional IT guys to deliver the information to the helpdesk. So I started thinking what can be done to speed up things and lessen the amount of actions to be taken by the helpdesk as well as the customer. There are several options to help the helpdesk:

  • Prepare helpdesk support facilities up front. Expect the logging and database dump questions and use a fast procedure to answer those questions.
  • Be even more pro-active and give the helpdesk access to a database dump weekly or monthly and give the helpdesk access to the logging or to the server remotely. This is similar to the access the CLEVR helpdesk has managing a Mendix cloud node. For on premise nodes similar access needs to be arranged as well.
  • Give the helpdesk extra tooling to pinpoint the problem and prevent a lot of questions.

This last option needs some more explanation. If the helpdesk does not know what the problem is they will perform an analysis of different components: The database, the server or the network and so on, and the helpdesk will ask information or logging from all those components. So I would like to give the helpdesk direct access to the information of these different components. If they can see the database log, check if the network is up and see the server stats the helpdesk can decide for themselves where to look first and whether or not they need the extra information of other logs at all.

THE SOLUTION

The options to help the helpdesk can be supported with available monitoring and logging technologies. For example remote access tools or generic APM solutions for log reading and system stats. However, often due to security restrictions the helpdesk does not get access to the components they need for analysis.

And remember, we all wanted that Flight data recorder that records all relevant information just before the crash. I have developed some Mendix specific (Flight data recorder) tools that assist the helpdesk to do a better job in diagnosing problems:

  • The Trap tool that captures all information right before an error like your Flight data recorder
  • The Log tool to log long term data
  • The Log rerouting (tool) to capture extra detailed information

The JVM Browser (tool) to look at the java and system component from inside the application.

Screenshot Mansystem APM console

The next part of this blog describes how the trap tool, log tool, log rerouting and JVM browser help the helpdesk to perform a better job.

THE TRAP TOOL (FLIGHT DATA RECORDER)

The Mendix business server, additional libraries and custom java code generate logging. This logging can be of several levels being critical, error, warning, info, debug or trace. The last two levels, debug and trace, are especially interesting when the helpdesk is troubleshooting. However the amount of messages with level debug and trace is very high. The risk is that logging all levels all the time would overflow the system, or would let the system run out of disk space. It could make the system very slow, because resources would be used to write debug and trace messages to the disk or database.

Trap tool message counter average duration output queue size

The dilemma: the helpdesk wants the debug and trace information without hampering the system too much. The answer to this is the Trap tool. This tool is listening to all levels of logging and keeping them in memory so the performance of the system is not negatively impacted by the desired logging level. Now to prevent running out of memory, the trap tool only keeps the lasts seconds in memory. So when an error message comes along the Trap tool has the last seconds before the error in memory and saves the log messages of those final seconds to the database. Does this sound like your airplane’s black box Flight data recorder or not?

THE LOG TOOL

You might ask why the helpdesk needs the log tool if they already have a Trap tool. The answer to that question is simple. There are situations where no error appears in the log and still your application doesn’t function properly.

Another answer might be that the helpdesk wants a specific log node to log for a longer period of time. The Mendix business server consists of many parts that write logging tagged as different log nodes. A log node is an indication of the source of the message. So it might be acceptable for the systems resources to select certain log nodes to log at debug or trace level for a limited amount of time.

Yet another very good reason is that the Log tool is available to the helpdesk. The helpdesk or a technical application manager can change log levels themselves. By using this tool relevant log information is available a lot faster.

LOG REROUTING

There is logging generated by non-Mendix libraries that do not end up in the Mendix logging. Java mail is an example.

The log rerouting tool listens to other logging systems and sends the log messages of those systems to the Mendix logging. This makes those messages available in the log tool and trap tool.

JVM BROWSER

Java has built-in management extensions called JMX. Those extensions can be used to get information from the JVM. This information includes startup parameters, version information, memory and CPU usage and a lot more.

Java Lang OperatingSystem Arch amd64

This information is normally available to java specific tools. By making this information available to the helpdesk you give them the right tool to see in which direction they should look further.

SUMMARY

In this blog I have tried to explain some come helpdesk patterns that focus on reproducibility and information collection. These are the first stages of solving issues and they were in the past time consuming activities.

By means of giving access to information to the helpdesk and by means of providing the right tools (something similar to an airplane’s black box flight data recorder that catches the last seconds of logging) you can enable your helpdesk to do their job better and faster and hopefully solve much more problems in a shorter time.

A helpdesk that uses the APM suite of Tools, is a helpdesk that can help themselves: the expected outcome is that the helpdesk can help the customer faster and better, and that what it was all about in the first place.

Do you want to learn more? Check out the first blog from Bart on application performance management.

June 16, 2025 4:28 PM
/Blog

Mendix progress button indication | CLEVR

Published on Jun 16, 2025
min read
Blog

For optimal user exercise the responsiveness of your application is vital. When you click on a button you want an immediate response… Mendix’s solution “the progress bar” is way too much in your face when you need to add it to many button.

It is time to find something more subtile for this.

Animation loading...

SO WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?

Animation click on action done

WELL… VERY NICE WIDGET! NO, IT’S NOT!

With a bit of styling and standard Mendix features you can do this.

  • Create an action button
  • Set a nice icon, like the Glyphicon refresh
  • Set the new option “Disabled during action”
  • Add the class “has-spinner”

That is the Mendix side, Next we need to set the css styling.

  • Show the refresh icon when the button is disabled
  • Animate the rotation of the refresh icon
  • Smooth transition for showing the spinner and increasing width of the button.
  • Show the progress pointer when hovering over the button.

Is it perfect?
No; it works on the disabled attribute of the button. Unfortunately Mendix does not add a special class to a button while it is performing an action. So, don’t used it with button you like to disable based on an attribute.

THE CSS CODE:

.has-spinner .glyphicon {
/* initial, do not display*/
display: inline-block;
opacity: 0;
width: 0;
-webkit-transition: opacity 0.25s, width 0.25s;
-moz-transition: opacity 0.25s, width 0.25s;
-o-transition: opacity 0.25s, width 0.25s;
transition: opacity 0.25s, width 0.25s;
/* delay animation, for fast responses*/
-webkit-transition-delay: 0.8s; /* Safari */
transition-delay: 0.8s;
}

.has-spinner:disabled {
/* show the progress pointer */
pointer-events: auto;
cursor: progress;
}
.has-spinner:disabled .glyphicon {
/* show the spinner */
opacity: 1;
width: auto;
/* This doesn't work, just fix for unknown width elements */
/* make the spinner spin*/
-moz-animation: spin 2s infinite linear;
-o-animation: spin 2s infinite linear;
-webkit-animation: spin 2s infinite linear;
animation: spin 2s infinite linear;
}
/* set width for different btn sizes */
.has-spinner.btn-mini:disabled .glyphicon-refresh {
width: 10px;
}
.has-spinner.btn-small:disabled .glyphicon-refresh {
width: 13px;
}
.has-spinner.btn:disabled .glyphicon-refresh {
width: 16px;
}
.has-spinner.btn-large:disabled .glyphicon-refresh {
width: 19px;
}
/* create the animation */
@-moz-keyframes spin {
0% { -moz-transform: rotate(0deg)}
100% {-moz-transform: rotate(359deg)}
}
@-webkit-keyframes spin {
0% {-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg)}
100% {-webkit-transform: rotate(359deg)}
}
@-o-keyframes spin {
0% {-o-transform: rotate(0deg)}
100% {-o-transform: rotate(359deg)}
}
@-ms-keyframes spin {
0% {-ms-transform: rotate(0deg) }
100% { -ms-transform: rotate(359deg)}
}
@keyframes spin {
0% { transform: rotate(0deg)}
100% { transform: rotate(359deg)}
}

Cheers and have fun! Andries Smit.

June 16, 2025 4:28 PM

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What does PLM stand for?

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2

What are the steps in the PLM process?

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3

What is a PLM strategy?

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4

What is the difference between PLM and PDM?

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5

What is the difference between ALM and PLM?

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